Lighting Equipment

When asked to do a report on the LiteShaper, I said, "Great." I'd seen the product mentioned in previous Shutterbug issues and it looked very interesting and unique. A box full of several LiteShaper panels and a couple of softboxes soon arrived on my doorstep. I worked with small- and medium-sized Chimera softboxes. After putting the boxes together and adding the...

I'm not really fussy about my lights. By that, I mean I'm not enamored by a specific brand and I don't need them to measure light in hundredths of a stop. I also don't need them to cycle in half a second. If I were a fashion or commercial photographer, things might be different, but as a portrait guy, my needs are pretty simple.

I 'm always looking for new solutions to light small things. Change that. I'm always looking for easier and faster solutions to light small things. Let's face it: lighting tabletops is never easy, although you'd think it should be. And sometimes, formulaic lighting is exactly what's needed. Then along comes the Gem eBox, from MK Digital Direct.

If you enjoy exploring the fascinating world of close-up photography you should consider a ring flash as an essential part of your creative kit. A ring flash mounts around your taking lens and eliminates problems associated with standard shoe-mount flash and even off-camera flash, mainly the inability to down-angle the...

Riddle me this: What's the hardest thing to find on any location shoot? If you said, "clients who were on time," that would be partially true, but the correct answer is--an AC power outlet. They're even more difficult to find if you're at the beach, in a park, or as I often find myself, on a racetrack somewhere. One of the niftiest solutions...

The Quantum Qflash T4d Digital is a serious flash unit that combines the form factor and user interface of the kind of high-end flash units that camera manufacturers charge big bucks for with the kind of power normally found in small monobloc studio strobes. Then there's that removable reflector that...

Shooting with powerful studio style flash units has always meant dealing with the dreadful PC sync cord. That horrible little PC sync connection on your camera hasn't changed much in the past 60 years, and it remains the least reliable link in the world of most studio photographers.

OK, I'll be the first one to admit that I'm a klutz. I like to work with long lenses (an 85mm lens is short to me) and am constantly backing up into whatever boyfriend, husband, or hanger-on that models feel...

When it comes to heavy-duty pro lighting gear, Balcar has long been a name synonymous with high-end studio strobes. This French company has been at the forefront of a number of trends in photography. Started in 1952, Balcar...

Light, as they say, "is light." The most important characteristic of monolights, or any kind of lighting system, is the quality and the quantity of the light they produce. Other stuff like recycling time, power...

Anyone who knows me recognizes that I have a thing for light meters. I own, and regularly use, several and have collected a number of antiques that decorate the shelves of my office. This obsession started when I...

White Lightning strobes almost single-handedly revolutionized the studio strobe world. With their first coffee-can shaped WL10,000 more than 20 years ago, Paul C. Buff and company brought serious strobe lighting gear to a whole new generation of...

In the 1960s my father got me a used twin-lens reflex camera, and, with a few rolls of Kodak Plus-X in hand, this teen-ager set out to photograph New York City. Lacking a light meter, I learned to guess exposures following guidelines on a cue card. It wasn't long before I was given a...

"Digital" is a word that has been thrown about a lot recently. MP3 players have given rise to "digital headphones," drugstore minilabs offer "digital prints," and now we're beginning to see the popularization of "digital lighting." ...